Corresponding
Section Numbers in Editions of the Doctrine and Covenants

Corresponding Section Numbers in Editions of the
Doctrine and Covenants

The most
important Joseph Smith–era sources for studying the texts and the textual
history of Joseph Smith’s revelations are Revelation Book 1, a manuscript
compilation of revelations created circa March 1831 to July 1835; Revelation
Book 2, a manuscript compilation created circa February 1832 to circa November
1834; The Evening and the Morning Star (1832–1833), a church
newspaper that published a number of Joseph Smith’s revelations; the Book of
Commandments (1833), the first compilation of Joseph Smith’s revelations;
Evening and Morning Star (1835–1836), an edited reprint of the
earlier newspaper; the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (1835), an
expanded compilation; and the second edition of the Doctrine and Covenants
(1844). For more information about these sources and the textual history of
Joseph Smith’s revelations, consult the first two volumes of the Revelations
and Translations series.

In annotation
in The Joseph Smith Papers, source citations identify
revelations by their original date and by a citation of the version most
relevant to the particular instance of annotation, which is generally one of
the versions identified in the preceding paragraph. (Occasionally, a citation
may reference a Joseph Smith–era version of a revelation other than the
versions identified above, such as a loose manuscript copy or a version
published in a non-Mormon newspaper.) The following table is provided to help
readers refer from the cited version of a revelation to other versions of the
same revelation.

The table
includes revelations announced by Joseph Smith—plus letters, records of
visions, articles, minutes, and other items, some of which were authored by
other individuals—that were copied into Revelation Book 1 or Revelation Book 2,
or that were published in the Book of Commandments or Doctrine and Covenants in
or before 1844, the year of Smith’s death. The table also includes material
originating with Joseph Smith published in the Doctrine and Covenants after
1844. Such later-canonized material includes, for example, extracts of Joseph
Smith’s 20 March 1839 letter written from the jail in Liberty, Missouri. These
extracts, first canonized in 1876, are currently found in sections 121 through
123 of the Latter-day Saint edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

The 1835 and
1844 editions of the Doctrine and Covenants included a series of lectures on
the subject of faith, which constituted part 1 of the volume. Only part 2, the
compilation of revelations and other items, is represented in the table.

Some material
was significantly revised after its initial publication in the canon. For
instance, the revelation in chapter 28 of the Book of Commandments included
twice as much material when it was republished in the Doctrine and Covenants in
1835. As another example, chapter 65 of the Book of Commandments stops abruptly
before the end of the revelation because publication of the volume was
disrupted; the revelation was not published in its entirety until 1835. These
and other changes of greater or lesser significance are not accounted for in
the table.

The far left column of the table
gives the standard date of each item, based on careful study of original
sources. The “standard date” is the date a revelation was originally dictated
or recorded. If that date is ambiguous or unknown, the standard date is the
best approximation of the date, based on existing evidence. The standard date
provides a way to identify each item and situate it chronologically with other
documents, but it cannot be assumed that every date corresponds to the day an
item was first dictated or recorded. In some cases, an item may have been
recorded without a date notation. It is also possible that a few items were
first dictated on a date other than the date surviving manuscripts bear. The
dates found in this table were assigned based on all available evidence,
including later attempts by Joseph Smith and his contemporaries to recover
date, place, and circumstances.

Where surviving
sources provide conflicting information about dating, editorial judgment has
been exercised to select the most likely date (occasionally only an approximate
month), based on the most reliable sources. In cases in which two or more items
bear the same date, they have been listed in the order in which they most
likely originated, and a letter of the alphabet has been appended, providing
each item a unique editorial title (for example, Oct. 1830–A or Oct. 1830–B).
Information on dating issues will accompany publication of these items in the
Documents series.

The second and
third columns indicate the manuscript page numbers for each item that appears
in Revelation Book 1 or Revelation Book 2. Because Revelation Book 1 is missing
several leaves, it is impossible to give inclusive page ranges for some items.
In such cases, the beginning page number can be determined from an index
written in the original manuscript book, and this number is marked with an
asterisk (*).

The fourth
column shows the date an item was published in The Evening and the
Morning Star. The date given is the date of the issue in which the item
was published as a separate document (either completely or in extracted form);
issues in which the item was only quoted in editorial matter are not included.
Similarly, the sixth column provides the date an item was published in
Evening and Morning Star, the edited Ohio reprint of the earlier
Missouri periodical.

The fifth
column and the seventh through tenth columns provide the number of the chapter
(in the case of the Book of Commandments) or section (in the case of editions
of the Doctrine and Covenants) in which the item was published in one or more
of five different canonical editions, the first three of which were initiated
by Joseph Smith.